An
AI summit is an opportunity to transfer
the power of change to all of the people
that are affected by its' outcome. This
includes the leaders and employees of the
organization at every level and expertise,
as well as "external stakeholders" who will
also benefit tremendously from a successful
AI summit. An AI summit harnesses the "logic
of the whole," and enables quality relationships
to be developed between individuals who
otherwise would have never come together.
Summits give a voice to everyone involved.

The
people that are involved in the AI process
inevitably let their guard down, and a sense
of liberation replaces doubt and skepticism.
This liberation leads to empowerment, which
leads to excitement, which in turn manifests
itself into a positive change. The most
difficult task of a leader who wants to
advocate change is not only convincing a
group that change is warranted, but also
what the change should look like. An AI
summit allows this thinking process to evolve
naturally, and sometimes in reverse order.
Once people realize themselves that they
are not operating at their full potential
and they discover truly
better and more efficient ways of doing
business, advocacy ends and encouragement
begins. The AI summit gives everyone the
opportunity to create a living mission statement
that isn't just a paragraph posted on the
wall; it's an operational mindset!

The
AI summit process is divided into three
major phases: planning, execution, and follow-up.
The first step of the planning phase comes
in the form of an Executive Steering Committee
(ESC). The ESC consists of a group
of people (~10-30 depending on the size
of the organization) who all meet for a
two-day meeting hosted by Dr. Barrett and
co-facilitators. The meeting will
focus partly on AI education and partly
on summit preparation. After everyone
has been educated in the way of AI, the
committee then needs to make a decision
concerning sponsoring a summit. The first
question obviously is "can our organization
benefit from an AI summit? And, are we willing
to allocate the time and resources to sponsor
one?" Once the decision has been made to
have a summit, the ESC needs to begin the
planning process. The summit needs to be
"designed." The most fundamental design
feature will be the summit topic. The topic
of the summit will give the summit participants
an idea of what needs to be accomplished
during the summit, and it gives the ESC
some control by highlighting a specific
area of interest. There are also many logistical
issues that need to be addressed prior
to a summit. Of course all of these issues
can't be covered in one or two days, but
the ESC can identify and delegate and produce
a means for getting the work done (i.e.
setting up a planning committee & developing
a timeline).

The
second phase is summit execution.
A summit is a four-day event that brings
together people from every level of the
organization plus external stakeholders.
There is no set size for an AI summit, but
they usually consist of about 100-300 people.
Each day of the summit is dedicated to one
part of the AI 4-D model. The first day
is discovery . On this
day, participants define themselves and
point out personal and organizational strengths.
The second day is dream .
This day is devoted to members sharing their
visions of what the ideal should look like.
Day three is the design
day on which a bridge is built between discovery
and dream (how do we get there from here?).
The last day is destiny .
This is when the action teams proclaim their
intentions and form pilot project teams
based on the last three days of discussion.

The
last phase of the AI summit process is follow-up.
In this phase, pilot groups work on the
issues that emerged out of the summit process.
To assist pilot groups, the CPC can provide
a means for online collaboration to provide
greater flexibility in information transfer.
The CPC can also facilitate post-summit
progress meetings and help with analyzing
AI impact. The length of the follow-up
phase can last months or even years, depending
on how the organization operates.